@Anonymous
This is the point I amtrying to make. For the average customer I totally agree the smarthub (is best of a bad bunch) is great as is digital voice and for the average user this works great for 500Mbs and 1Gbps which is actually more then fast enough for the average user and potentially priced to high for most is this climate. My point is when BT are offering a Premium Service and a Premium price, then this is not a service that will appeal to the average user due to not needing the extra speed or pay teh premium price.
The people who are going to take up the faster offerings or premium services are those who know how to configure these things and utilise the service and these Premium costing services should at least come with the equipment that can fully utilise the service or at least offer these premium users the opportunity to configure Digital Voice on a third party router
As for VOIP its a service i am currently looking into but i am very surprised BT did not go down teh VOIP route especially have a movile network they could of provided an App for mobiles and tied it all in lovely
BT use Openreach the same as many others. Some locations also benefit from alt-net services.
If you are technically minded, rather than buying a service because it goes faster so seems a good idea, then why worry about BT making poor choices in terms of hardware?
Just go to a provider who will give you what you need surely?
Toob are not a million miles away but not in our street for many years yet. If they turn up I suspect Openreach will suddenly add us to their build plan we are not on at all yet.
Will I take an Openreach based product from BT at that time with a Smart Hub or a fully symmetrical service where I can plug whatever I want into the ONT?
Choices, choices, but isn’t that the point of a supposedly competitive market?
I understand your frustration but if it is that bad in your eyes, buy something else, BT are unlikely to change their strategy because of our frustrations.
@Anonymous Choices are very limited in Cornwall I am afraid. Only teh Mjor ISPs here that provide more or less the smae locked in solutions as BT although i have not seen a offering faster the 1gbps from another ISp so maybe they will offer better kit at that time
While I'm horrified at the prices I see some BT customers paying, I only went with the 900/100 deal I took because it was the cheapest I could find. My service doesn't have "digital voice" included, but if I needed that I could use a third-party VOIP provider (I was using VOIP back in the early 2000s). My internet package is basic, and if it weren't for other things that I do, I'm pretty sure the SH2 would suffice, but pay elsewhere for hosting, domains, DDNS/SDNS services and more, and the router I use is a beast. But that's my choice, a single All-In-One package from anyone has never fulfilled my internet usage needs! And when my contract ends and the price gets hiked, I'll probably move again!